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Unworthiness

January 13, 2013

I don’t myself have a problem of feeling unworthy of spiritual help or transformation. I read about unworthiness in Father Rohr’s Daily Meditations from time to time, like today’s, and it sounds to me like someone describing a place I’ve never been to on vacation.

I am quite familiar with feeling a lack of self-confidence developed from previous negative feedback from other human beings, which can morph for me into feeling deemed generally unworthy by others, but in terms of my relationship to things spiritual, it just has never in my lifetime entered into the equation. The only feeling I can come up with to relate to a feeling of unworthiness is a knowledge that I’m no better (or worse) or special than anybody else, that we all have the same potential, and that we realize different parts or amounts of it in our different lives.

I thought it was worth bringing up because I am concerned that it is not a necessary or helpful feeling to have, and that it actually may be one of those flaws we need to remove in order to perceive without distortion.

I also want to ask, in all friendly amazement, “Where did you come up with that?!”

To me, its counter is something like, “Why not me?”, as in, “I’m nobody special but I’m nobody worse [along the axis that matters].” Because we are talking about a particular axis — ourselves as conduits for God’s love, and for that we’re all equally well-suited. The only thing any of us ever has which is relevant in terms of what we can bring to the party is (our) willingness.